What a withering look Nobili gives Guglielmi as he says this!  He can with difficulty keep his hands off him!

“Yes—­yes—­just so—­just so—­I applaud your sentiments, Count Nobili—­most appropriate.  Now I will go.”

Alarmed as he is, Guglielmi cannot resist one parting glance at Enrica.  She is crimson.  Then with an expression of infinite relief he retreats to the door walking backward.  Guglielmi has a strong conviction that if he turns round Count Nobili may kick him, so, keeping his eyes well balanced upon him, he fumbles with his hands behind his back to find the handle of the door.  In his confusion he misses it.

“Not for worlds, Signore Conte,” says Guglielmi, nervously passing his hand up and down the panel in search of the door-handle—­“not for worlds would I offend you!  Believe me—­(maledictions on the door—­it is bewitched!)”

Now Guglielmi has it!  Safely clutching the handle with both his hands, Guglielmi’s courage returns.  His mocking eyes look up without blinking into Nobili’s, fierce and flashing as they are.

“Before I go”—­he bows with affected humility—­“will you favor me, count, and you, madame” (Guglielmi is clutching the door-handle tightly, so as to be able to escape at any moment), “by informing me whether you still desire the deed of separation to be prepared for your signature in the morning?”

“Leave the room!” roars Count Nobili, stamping furiously on the floor—­“leave the room, or, Domine Dio!—­”

Maestro Guglielmi had jumped out backward, before Count Nobili could finish the sentence.

“Enrica!” cries Nobili, turning toward her—­he had banged-to the door and locked it—­“Enrica, if you love me, let us leave this accursed villa to-night!  This is more than I can bear!”

What Enrica replied, or if Enrica ever replied at all, is, and ever will remain, a mystery!

CHAPTER XII.

OH BELLO!

An hour or two has passed.  A slow and cautious step, accompanied with the tapping of a stick upon the stone flags of the floor, is audible along the narrow passage leading from the sala to Pipa’s room.  It is as dark as pitch.  Whoever it is, is afraid of falling, and creeps along cautiously, feeling by the wall.

Pipa, expecting to be summoned to her mistress—­Pipa, wondering greatly indeed what Enrica can be about, and why she does not go to bed, when she, the blessed dear, was so faint and tired, and crying—­oh, so pitifully!—­when she left her—­Pipa, leaning against the door-post near the half-open door, dozing like a dog with one eye open in case she should be called—­listened and looked out into the passage.  A figure is standing within the light that streams out from the door, a very well-remembered figure, stout and short—­a little bent forward on a stick—­with a round, rosy face framed in snowy curls, a world of pleasant wickedness in two twinkling eyes, on which the light strikes, and a mouth puckered up for any mischief.